Fate feels a bit discouraged at seeing her blades do nothing, but she quickly brushes it off and goes for another strike. Hopefully this time it won't miss.

 As they fought with the woman, she seemed to become even stronger and faster than before. John's grip on the woman's arm was broken as she wrestled away from him but the stasis around her held... but for how much longer?

 Once more, the woman shrugged off Fate's strike. However, Sal's broke through and he felt considerable resistance to the strike. The moment he removed his blade to ready another strike, the wound healed.

 Michael, meanwhile, throws salt in a haphazard manner around the slowly flailing woman... to no effect whatsoever.

"She's using vitae to withstand our attacks! She's got to run out eventually! Mist, keep her in stasis!," shouts Sal as he swings again.

John blinked. "What in the fresh hell is Vitae?" Once she broke his grip he wagged a finger at her. "Well if you are going to be eyeballing people with microwave eyes may as well do it right. Let's see how much battle damage stuck, gotta finish my facebook account." And then he started trying to get either her mask off or her head off if the mask was already broken off.

The exorcism had thankfully broken whatever terrible draining grasp the husk had on Nefertiti, but physical attacks continued to have seemingly little effect.  Talion's recommendation to deliver devastating damage without regard for overkill seemed to be on point, but would it suffice?  Sal seemed to think so, and Mistral intended to find out.  She answered him evenly, "D'accord.  Do not let up."

The Mistral who had performed the exorcism stepped aside again as her doppelganger returned to drive a flaming blade into the suspended husk's chest.

 The woman did not grunt or groan as her body was struck. Sal's impressive blow should have cleft her in twain but, instead his blade stopped just as he broke the surface of her flesh, as did Mistral's burning blade... and, despite the blade being covered in flame, the wounds from both blades healed near instantly.

 Just then, the woman wriggled free of Mistral's spatial distortion, swinging the pipe once more at Michael. She would likely have skewered him had John not had her in a headlock, trying to pry her welding mask off... but John found that her strength had grown considerably. It was like trying to hold on to a professional bodybuilder as she lifted him off the ground, still holding on to her neck.

 Still the woman made no sound. No grunts, no groans, no heavy breathing... only a silent drive to kill.

OOC: she's free from Mistral's spell but still grappled for now. Despite all the hacking and slashing, she seems to have sustained a grand total of 0 accumulated damage so far.

Fate could not believe how little she was affecting this creature. For only a moment, Fate questioned the strength of her new weapon, being that this was its first real test, but she stopped herself. These blades had to be able to do better than that. They must. So she tried once again this time aiming to stab it in an opening rather than slash at it.

"Fuck me, she's strong." John rotated around keeping his grip and bending his elbow backward in a way it shouldn't bend. He used the room then to get behind the target and wrapped his legs around her hips, his meat arm locked around her neck; the metal fingers digging in and under the muscle of her collar, and the metal arm into a joint lock. John had turned himself into the most inconvenient human straight jacket in the world. He whispered into her ear, "What makes the grass grow? Blood. blood. blood. To hell you ride with a devil dog." He then started aiming to expose her guts to the allies.

Time to bring out the big guns.
7 lethal
Standing control to spin her around and expose her guts for the others
Grabbing the muscles to remove 2 from her strength to resist.
Sealing the breath to start lowering her die pool.

Dice rolls:

"Right kids, you know the game. Don't stop flogging Molly here till the candy bursts out!" For now, he was the stasis.
This message was last edited by the player at 05:31, Wed 06 Jan 2021.

Nefertiti was sure that she might be of some use and she raced in her mind to see if she was able to determine what sort of Demon that was.  If she did succeed she was sure to aid in this battle and not be such a hinder.

Not knowing if she walked back into the room would she be able to take hold of her mind again.  But she had to do something.

With the little silver blade in hand she moved back to the entrance to look into the room but keeping her eyes away from the Demon to see.

07:26, Today: Nefertiti rolled 2 successes using 8d10 with the World of Darkness nWoD system with a target of 8, rerolling 10s with rolls of 7,5,8,1,4,1,3,10(+4).  Wit + Occ.

Sal gives one more supercharged swing at the woman, hoping she's at her limit, as he's approaching his.

Sergeant John Randall certainly deserved points for relentless determination against a foe beyond his understanding, and despite grievous injury.  He had the husk in a brutal hold that looked to be effective, and now that the suspension field was broken there was nothing else holding it back.  Best to bring this encounter to a swift conclusion.

Both of the Mistral replicas twirled their respective flaming knives in a precise mirror image of one another, and one feinted left while the other lunged in from the right.  She went low and drove the flickering blade at an upward angle aimed to pierce straight through a cheek to exit through the top of the skull.

 Each strike was made with the wet thud of blade against flesh... and, like each time before when they had struck, each blade stopped less than an inch beneath the flesh... but this time the wounds didn't close. Despite that, she did not seem to be weakening or tiring, despite the tremendous punishment you have dished out to her so far.

 John ripped off the woman's welding mask to reveal a woman's face... like you might see anywhere else on the street... save for the missing left eye and the scar over it shaped perfectly like an elbow blade stab wound.

 As she struggled, she reversed her grip on the pipe and stabbed herself through the abdomen and strait into John's body, slamming herself backwards against the wall with great force in an attempt to shake him off.

Michael was confused as the incantation didn’t work. No time to ponder it though as the woman wasn’t held down by magic anymore. The mask removed revealed the scar and missing eye. That might be a weak spot!He held his sword more like a spear and drove the blade straight into the empty eye socket that had been damaged before.

10:56, Today: Michael rolled 2 successes using 10d10 with the World of Darkness nWoD system with a target of 8, rerolling 10s with rolls of 4,1,3,1,2,2,8,8,4,4.  Zweihander half sword attack specific target eye all out attack.

Half sword technique adds two to the damage for a total of 4 damage called shot to her empty eye socket.

The pipe got through his clothing, through his skin, and then pushed his hips back as it connected with his dermal armor. "Quit trying to tickle my liver! It's the hardest working liver in the military!" The hand that had gripped into her shoulder muscle went out, around, under, and gripped her hand holding onto her weapon. With his feet, he twisted them but kept place in an attempt to screw with the muscle structure there. "Friggen sheepdog, hot topic goth wanna be, Fruit cake of pain sharing, Dora the Exploah looking Bitch."



Disarm Opponent – If you get one or more successes your character manages to pry an object from his opponent’s hand. Taking possession of the item is subsequent turns is considered the equivalent to drawing a weapon.

1 lethal, cant invoke full damage because of the disarm.
Standing control to spin her around and expose her guts for the others
Grabbing the muscles to remove 2 from her strength to resist.
Sealing the breath to start lowering her die pool now to -2.
This message was last edited by the player at 00:00, Sat 09 Jan 2021.

Running low on resources, Sal struck once again. He hoped the creature would go down soon.

Looking to Mistral
"Are you able to see that?

It is the entity of demonic, and it may be what we really need to deal with.  Can you contain it?

---

Spoiler text: (Highlight or hover over the text to view)
Pointing to an entity of light with multiple wings and faces as well as darker veins of circuitry running throughout.

---

 As Michael and Sal both struck, they each felt that now-familiar resistance to their strikes.. but, as John wrenched at the woman's hand, the two swordsmen's work finally came to fruition and the woman's knees buckled. She fell face forward on the pipe, driving it further into her and into John as well. Now the woman lay still, face down on the gore-slicked floor.
This message was last edited by the GM at 02:15, Sun 10 Jan 2021.

When the husk went down John did NOT let go. He did, however, roll over to expose the target. "Don't stop till you get her head off. Bitch reanimates after you take her down." At least that was what John experienced after poking a hole in her head.

Sal complied with John's suggestion, aiming to sever the woman's head from neck.

Mistral nodded once in response to Nefertiti’s inquiry, joining the queen in regarding the luminous entity that had been cast out of the husk.  “I am uncertain as yet, but I suspect it to be an amalgamation of the souls consumed by the husk, cast from the body and reforged into something nouveau.  I do know it to be très puissant, however.  Very powerful.  Whether we come to opposition with it will be its choice, and ours.”

By then the men had cut down the seemingly indestructible woman monster, dragging her to the ground and doing their best to assure her end.  The Mistral who was not speaking to Nefertiti stepped in and knelt next to the pinned creature and stared at it, watching for any lingering movement or resonance.  At length she said, “I shall assure its destruction.  Hold it still.”

From the satchel slung about a hip she retrieved a smooth black stone that fit neatly into her palm, and presented it as if in offering.  Mistral spoke carefully and with gravity, “I wish for the utter destruction of the singular entity that lay before me: body, soul, essence and corpus, as well as its every sympathetic bond, pact and bargain.”  As whatever happened next happened she said calmly but with an air of finality, “Partis dans le vide.”

 As John held the woman... who, despite not moving, still seemed to be offering up some form of resistance to their blades as Sal worked seemingly in vain on her neck and Mistral offered up her wish.

 There was a moment where nothing happened and then suddenly the creature began to dissolve into dust. Mistral had seen this before... a spell meant to destroy the boundaries between spaces... now used upon the space within the Husk's body.

 The entire process took only a few seconds until nothing remained and the threads of reality formed back into a complete tapestry, mending the hole her presence had left behind.

 John, upon witnessing the result of the wish, was knocked unconscious, now lying face down in the same place the Husk had been.

Sal sheathed his sword and looked around through his glasses before looking at Mistral, with a slight smile, "Thank you Mist. Was this our target, or one of its servants? Should we expect more resistance on our way to finding Noah?" He asked.

And like clockwork Noah had Grey sent a text message to the network, but being that it was Grey she instead took a picture of Noah at Talion's shed. He was sicker than a dog, laying out gripping solid ground like he was thinking he would fall up, and had a small card on his nose that said if he escapes the abyss three more times he got free icecream.

The mirror images of Mistral watched in solemn silence as the creature crumbled away into dust, and reality closed in to reoccupy the void left behind.

One of the pair knelt by the fallen warrior who had grappled the enemy until his last breath.  There was a strange shift in the area immediately around John, and a different floor seemed to phase in underneath him, weirdly superimposed over this floor.  Both that Mistral and John's fallen form seemed to alter in perspective, and her voice sounded distant despite the nearness, "This man requires medical attention, immédiatement.  You.  Fetch First Sergeant Caraway."  Then, one Mistral, John Randall and the foreign portion of floor all vanished like an optical illusion, and were gone.

The Mistral who remained turned to Sal and said, "That was it, though we ought to assure all is clear.  Firstly, however, Sal has brought a guest whom we must meet.  I will open your sight into the Shadow to see it, if you wish.  Any of you."  If given permission to do so, Mistral swept a hand before Sal's face and spoke an unutterable syllable, opening for him a second sight into the shadowy realm of spirits.  She would repeat the spell for any other volunteers.  A message arrived just then, which Mistral checked on her mini-slate.  She stared at the screen for a long moment before putting it away, and breathed a long sigh of relief.

OOC - for those who wish it, granting a view into the spirit realm, where you'll see this described by the GM previously:

---

Spoiler text: (Highlight or hover over the text to view)
...an entity of light with multiple wings and faces as well as darker veins of circuitry running throughout. It made no moves currently, instead only surveying itself and its surroundings intently.

---

Mistral turned to the luminous figure and greeted it in an even tone, "Bonsoir.  We mean you no harm.  I am Mistral.  What is your name?"

 The entity looked down at the group, staring at them with its alien features. Where it touched, the corruption pulled away. When it spoke, it did so slowly... deliberately... and, when it did, the world around it changed.

 "And neither do I you. I no longer have a name to give. I was once called by three names... but I can no longer remember them."

 As the creature spoke, the threads of reality hummed a discordant tune, like the strings of an instrument left abandoned for far too long. Faint changes took place around the group... but they were far too small and brief to take note of, existing only long enough to be noted, like movement in the corner of one's eye.